Yup we need more electric cars

@ArishMell Well I'm not explaining biased banter because if you don't know what's biased in your previous reply explaining is going down an unwanted rabbit hole.
The last sentence means exactly what it says.
As for the post title it's a shame sarcasm passes you.
All that talk about EV charging and paying is a waste on me. EVs are not environmentally friendly. I've worked in the electronics field my entire life. They are landfill from the day they are built. Want more toxins in the world? Keep building them.

@Gibbon There is no need to be rude simply because you don't agree with my opinions - nor presumably statements of fact which is all my last paragraph is.

I have serious reservations about EVs too - and certainly could never own one.

I appreciate if we live in different countries our situations will differ, but on reason of the resistance to EVs in mine is the fear of being unable to find suitable charging-points on a long journey (the number is rapidly increasing though); and the simple fact for at least a third of motorists (including me) of having nowhere to recharge a car at home.

I did not miss the sarcasm in your title at all. Your opening remarks make your views on electric vehicles clear, mainly it seems on whether the national electricity supplies can withstand ever-increasing demand..

@ArishMell Data centers, which are being built increasingly here, are power hungry monsters which require new power infrastructure just to become operational. The green approach of large scale solar farms, which mother nature easily destroys and the not so successful monstrosity bird killing wind mills are impractical answers for large scale solutions.

@Gibbon I agree with those problems.

No-one seems able or willing to ask seriously, "Do we really need these vast data-centres?"

The UK is moving to a mixture of nuclear-power, wind-power and solar-power.

Nuclear power: slow to build and very expensive, and the radioactive parts are difficult and expensive to dismantle when they eventually wear out. Big advantage: huge amounts of power at steady rates from comparatively small buildings.


Wind: Most of England's largest "wind farms" are off-shore, many in the North Sea, where the winds are at least more stable than over land, although of course not controllable. The cost being that the location makes them harder to construct and maintain. Scotland is using off-shore but also on-land wind-power; covering any reasonably accessible hill-top it can with wind-turbines. From my brother's home near Glasgow, everywhere you look the skyline is marred by the machines.

The fear that wind-turbines kill birds has been around for a long time but there doesn't seem much evidence for it on any large scale. If there was, in Britain, there would be considerably more outcry and campaigning from nature-conservation charities like the wildlife-trusts and the Royal Society For The Protection of Birds. On land, wind-turnbines are thought potentially more dangerous to bats than to birds, but I don't know why. There are human threats to both groups of animals, but far more by other activities than by wind-turbines.

Solar power: Feasible in England though our relatively high latitude - about level with Newfoundland - means shorter Winter daylight. Unfortunately it is also covering large areas of good farmland with the panels, rendering the land useless agriculturally for more than sheep-grazing. Many homes have had solar panels fitted on the roof, and very usefully too although it is not cheap. Luckily the pay-back time seems shorter than the physical life of the panels, and until a few years ago you could even "sell" the surplus electricity (generated e.g. when you are away from home) to your mains electricity supplier.


What's that they say?

"No such thing as a free lunch!"

@ArishMell Molten Salt Reactors Are Nuclear's Future as well as vast energy period. They are scalable for large cities and small rural areas. They are less costly to build and much safer and greatly reduce the waste issue. Humanity just has to get off it's ass and finalize development and start building.
Tell the anti nuclear power crowd to go pound sand.

@Gibbon Rolls-Royce has indeed suggested something like this, though I don't know what coolant their reactors use. Their designs are based on Naval use.

@ArishMell I respect Ward Clark of Redstate and his editorials. He wrote the first piece that introduced me these reactors there theory of operation and the practical applications that have been tested. I believe China can take credit for their first creation but right or wrong who cares. This is high energy production in much smaller packaging than traditional nuclear and it's cheaper to build and much safer. My pea brain says this a winner that needs to be put into practice around the world asap. Whether they like to admit it or not it's a win for the green minded also. They just need a kick in the head to realize it. I got the following researching your coolant question .

In molten salt reactors, the coolant is typically a mixture of molten salts, which are used as both the coolant and the medium to dissolve the fuel. The most common coolant used in molten salt reactors is a mixture of:

Lithium fluoride (LiF)
Beryllium fluoride (BeF2)
Uranium tetrafluoride (UF4)
Zirconium fluoride (ZrF4)
This mixture is often referred to as FLiBe (Lithium Fluoride-Beryllium Fluoride). The FLiBe mixture has a number of desirable properties, including:

High heat transfer coefficients
Low vapor pressure
High thermal stability
Ability to dissolve uranium and other actinides
The use of a molten salt coolant in molten salt reactors provides a number of advantages, including:

High temperature operation (up to 700°C)
Low pressure operation
Passive safety features
Ability to operate with a variety of fuel types
It's worth noting that other molten salt mixtures are also being researched and developed for use in molten salt reactors, including mixtures based on sodium fluoride (NaF) and calcium fluoride (CaF2). However, FLiBe remains the most widely studied and developed coolant for molten salt reactors.

@Gibbon Thankyou very much for that!

I am not totally anti-"green", and the whole debate does miss one vital question, but I do think many of their ideas very naive. I wonder if some of the most exciteable do not even understand the difference between power and energy, nor that raw petroluem is a "fossil" but is not "fuel".

I believe we have no choice but to use nuclear power, and the debate comes down to the best form of it and how to ensure it is safe. It does frighten many people, but that comes down to the anti-nuclear campaigners continually citing the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters without bothering about how they happened so how to prevent repeats..


Slightly off-track my local paper recently reported how our County Council, which is already replacing Diesel vans with electric ones, is going over to using fuel made from waste vegetable oil in its heavier vehicles. The report said some operators use a blend of vegetable oil and Diesel oil but what the Council is using, is processed entirely from waste cooking oil. Apparently it is manufactured so the engine does not need modifying.

The "vital question"? Although we cannot say new deposits will not continue to be found for some time to come, sooner or later we will stop using petroleum, either by policy or by depletion. Err, then what, bearing in mind fuels are a fraction of the mineral's total range of products? I have heard or read little discussion on that - plenty about "fossil fuels", but not about all the bulk chemicals for other uses.

@ArishMell There are so many products that require oil for their manufacture if we end it's use 100% tomorrow consumers all around the world go nuts because they couldn't obtain the products they depend on in their daily lives.

@Gibbon Indeed, and even if the products themselves don't contain materials made from petroleum derivatives, the processing quite likely involves them in one way or another.

Possibly, the first products to disappear as materials become scarcer and costlier, will be the goods we do not need: the toys, the luxuries, the ephemera. There is though the vast swathe of goods that are vital, and alternatives to their present forms will need be found.

I can't predict by more than sweeping generalising what the future holds for our great-grandchildren's generation, but It does not seem very hopeful....